This may seem unduly harsh aimed as a criticism of one struggling woman who has happily found a way out of poverty. But if, as the editors of Left Futures claim, they intend to attack "media narratives", I suggest that they're right on the money. There is indeed a toxic politics involved in the way that the government, marketers and certain media outlets have attempted to link the idea of austerity to a certain kind of lifestyle, and a certain image of a snug past.

This began as an intelligent marketing device. Not long after the recession, and the ensuing "age of austerity" began, there was an immediate and very savvy move by marketers to tap into certain nostalgic, melancholic sentiments. The first sign was the return of the Arctic Roll, which was both cheaper and seen as a kind of "comfort food".

But, linked to an emerging "austerity nostalgia", with the iconography of the 40s and rationing, was the idea that doing without could be an occasion for virtue and health. A typical expression of this ideology was an article by food journalist Rose Prince urging that this be a time to return to "simple pleasures", and to teach "traditional home economics". The piece was illustrated with a Ministry of Food poster from the era of rationing.

The government, of course, has seized the opportunity presented here. While pursuing the austerity project that leads to entrenched, long-term poverty for many, it urged families to "eat healthily on the cheap" with its far-from-memorable "Change 4 Life" campaign.

Underlying this is a noxious class politics. Jamie Oliver gave vent to it in an interview with the Radio Times, arguing that modern-day poverty involves people eating cheese and chips out of a styrofoam container while watching a "massive fucking TV". He was referring to a scene in his television programme, Ministry of Food, which deployed austerity nostalgia in a blunt fashion, to sell a message that one can "prepare nutritious meals on any budget".

The fact that food is so saturated with class connotations – with, as Alex Andreou pointed out, a politics of "aspiration" – is telling. It is one of the ways in which the discussion of class has become refracted through the prism of consumption rather than production. Instead of being interested in one's means of securing a livelihood, we are supposed to be more interested now in some nebulous "lifestyle" indicators – whether it's cider and fags, or lentils and Kettle chips; the iPad, or the "massive fucking TV". These cultural markers of class offer moral-aesthetic judgments on the consumers; they cleave the deserving from the undeserving poor.

But there is more. The revival of austerity regalia is linked to another revival: that of the idea of empire. In the same tacky gift shops in which one finds the "Keep Calm and Carry On" dinner plates, one also finds the "British Empire Was Built on Cups of Tea" trays. This melancholic sense of loss is associated with the idea that today's poor have lost their way. They're not like the poor in the good old days; they are seen as feral, mindlessly self-indulgent, and stupid. In this purview, virtue can only be restored by a return to traditional families using traditional cooking and traditional husbandry.

Of course, Jack Monroe didn't invent any of this. She was forced into gustatory inventiveness by her poverty, and she used her platform to speak out against the demonisation of the poor. But nor is she in control of the way in which the media takes hold of ideas like this, the way such ideas fit into wider cultural ideologies. The cheapo meal is not a bad idea if you don't have much money. But there is an encroaching idea that there's something morally admirable about it – and that should be opposed.